After two years of traveling around the country criticizing President Bush, President-elect Barack Obama said Friday that he “always thought [Bush] was a good guy.”

“I mean, I think personally he is a good man who loves his family and loves his country,” Obama said in an exclusive interview with CNN’s John King.

During the election season, Obama frequently campaigned against what he called Bush’s “failed policies” and promised a “clean break” from the past eight years.

Asked if there was anything he wanted to take back, now that he has spent more time with the president, Obama praised Bush’s team for helping with a smooth transition and said part of what America is about is being able to have “disagreements politically and yet treat each other civilly.”

Obama also said he thought Bush made “the best decisions that he could at times under some very difficult circumstances.”

Except for Richard Nixon, no president since Harry Truman has left office more unloved than George W. Bush. Truman’s rehabilitation took decades. Bush’s will come sooner. Indeed, it has already begun. The chief revisionist? Barack Obama.
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Vindication is being expressed not in words but in deeds — the tacit endorsement conveyed by the Obama continuity-we-can-believe-in transition. It’s not just the retention of such key figures as Defense Secretary Bob Gates or Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner, who, as president of the New York Fed, has been instrumental in guiding the Bush financial rescue over the past year. It’s the continuity of policy.